There’s a lot to like in Henrik Ruben Genz’s Terribly
Happy (Frygtelig Lykkelig), a Danish film released
in its native country in 2008 but now, finally, making its way to
the American market. Like a John Ford Western, it provides
reminder of how thin is the veneer of law and civilization upon
the most primitive impulses of human nature. That autochthonous
— meaning sprung from the earth — sort of nature is underlined
by Mr. Genz’s setting his story in the village of Skarrild in the
desolate marshlands of South Jutland on the Danish coast. The
image of people, animals, cars, bicycles — all the trappings of
everyday life — sinking into or emerging out of the bog is
constant throughout the film and a metaphor for the symbiotic
relationship, moral as well as practical and economic, between
the people and their watery land. It is a relationship that owes
nothing to the big city of Copenhagen, from which Robert (Jakob
Cedergren) is dispatched at the beginning of the picture to be
the town’s sole policeman.
At first he is treated with suspicion as an outsider. The
villagers are outwardly polite and even friendly, but they also
make it clear that they don’t want him there. When he is
befriended by a young woman called Ingerlise (Lene Maria
Christensen) who claims that her brute of a husband,
Jørgen (Kim Bodnia), beats her, it is
hinted that she is really just a self-dramatizer who gives
herself the bruises she sports in order to cause trouble for
Jørgen. For his part,
Jørgen shows Robert the scar where, he
says, Ingerlise put a bread knife in him. She won’t file a
complaint about Jørgen’s treatment of
her, so there is nothing Robert can do anyway. But she wants him
to take her away from the village, back to Copenhagen from where
she, too, originates. The tangled and obscure family relationship
between Jørgen and Ingerlise can stand
for the stifling intimacies with which the whole village has had
to learn to deal without outside help.
As the town policeman, Robert is called “Marshal,” which
only underlines the connection to the Western, Hollywood’s former
stock in trade where once were found similar themes. Like Ford’s
great film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, this is a
meditation upon the frontier — but it is more explicitly the
frontier between civilization and savagery. In both films, an
outsider comes to town as a representative of law and
civilization and doing things “by the book” only to be told by
the villagers that “we handle things ourselves here,” without any
need for intervention by law or government. But in Ford’s film,
the frontier town is eventually civilized, even though it prefers
not to know the dark secret of how this came about. In Mr. Genz’s
movie, the town’s primitive honor culture appears to be more
evenly matched with the forces of law and civilization. By the
end, Robert too is saying to outsiders that “we handle things
ourselves here.” The villagers tell him, “You’re our man now,
Robert.”
As part of their way of handling things themselves, the
villagers have a rough and ready way of dealing with
troublemakers, who are invited at gunpoint to take themselves off
to the bog and not return except as a corpse. Then they’ll get a
nice funeral and a friendly send-off, though the Lutheran parson
may mention that the deceased “never quite fit in here.” Robert
himself at first seems to fit into this category. He arrives from
Copenhagen with a secret, which emerges in the course of the
film, about two-thirds of the way through, though hints of it are
given frequently before its final revelation. We know, for
instance, that his posting to God-forsaken Skarrild is a
punishment for having done something to embarrass the police when
he was on the force in Copenhagen, and that his hope in coming to
the town is to redeem himself sufficiently that he is invited to
return to the city and civilization.
That he doesn’t want to be in Skarrild, or to be part of
the peculiar village life there, that he misses his wife and
child, who are estranged from him in some way that seems to be
connected with his misbehavior and resulting punishment — all
these are pertinent facts, as is the nature of his offense which,
when we find it out, creates a curious bond between him and the
villagers. The suspense comes from the doubt as to whether Robert
will be dragged down, as into a bog, by the moral morass of
village life or if he will eventually escape back to
civilization. I hope it is not giving away too much if I say that
the film could do with a little more of Ford’s optimism and
belief in progress, a little less of the flirtation with nihilism
that is too typical of Danish, as of other European cinema. But
if you don’t mind the darkness of Mr. Genz’s vision — and if you
do you’ve probably given up going to movies anyway, especially
European ones — you may find this a thoroughly enjoyable way to
spend a couple of hours.
